Hunger Reads: Mayor Bloomberg's Take On Just About Everything, and The "No Rape" Exception From the GOP

So you’re stuck in line at Chipotle, bored, behind on your news-reading—yet not exactly jonesing for another rehash of the headlines. Enter the Hunger Reads, our daily compendium of the political stories we think you’ll actually enjoy reading. (At least more than reading the take-out menu over and over.)

Number one—number one: We are not banning anything. All we’re saying is that restaurants and theaters can’t use cups greater than 16 ounces. So if you want to buy 32 ounces, you can buy 32 ounces, you just got to carry it back to your seat, or your table, in two cups. If the question is "Do you think they should be banning?," that’s a separate question. That has nothing to do with portion control. We are not banning anything. And when you say "Wait a second—sure, you are restricting the size of the cups," well, the manufacturer restricts the size of the bottle you get. Everybody does portion control. They do it with different objectives, maybe.

But to say to the public—the public says "I have a right to have my bottle of soda in any size I want"—no! You only have the right to buy soda in the size of the bottle that the manufacturer decides it is in his or her interest to sell.

Popularity:

It takes a while. Leadership is about doing what you think is right and then building a constituency behind it. It is not doing a poll and following from the back. If you want to criticize the political process—and it’s probably true throughout history, and certainly not just in the United States—I think it’s fair to say, in business or in government, an awful lot of leaders follow the polls.

And that’s not the way to win. I happen to think it’s not ethical, or right, and not your obligation. But I don’t even think it’s good business or politics, because people aren’t good at describing what is in their own interest. If you say to somebody, "How many times do you turn the page?" and then go and stand on the other side of the room where they don’t notice you, and count, you will get a very different number from what they said they did. That’s true with everything. And—the obligation—what leaders should do is make decisions as to what they think is in the public interest based on the best advice that they can get, and then try and build a constituency and bring it along.

The public, I believe—and I’ve always thought this—is much more likely to follow if the public believes that you are genuine. I’ve said this before, and yesterday in this economics speech, I gave a kiss to George W. Bush. But that’s true. George W. Bush, who I don’t agree with on a lot of things—I think he got elected and reelected because the public thought he was genuine. They think his father was genuine. Jeb—I know [him] very well; he’s on the board of my foundation—he is genuine, they believe.

Bin Laden:

That’s like giving Harry Truman credit for dropping the bomb: any president would’ve pushed that button, any president would’ve dropped the bomb. Harry Truman stood up to Douglas MacArthur. An awful lot of people wouldn’t have done that. Harry Truman integrated the Army. A lot of people wouldn’t have done that. Harry Truman had the Marshall Plan—if in World War I we’d done that, we wouldn’t have had a World War II. But dropping the bomb, no, and I don’t think, in this case, Osama bin Laden—and incidentally, if you believe any of these stories or books, who knows what he did or didn’t do or was forced into. I mean, I don’t know. But I think that’s not—I don’t know that that’s fair. I don’t know that you can look—I mean, Hillary Clinton’s very competent—but there’s no Obama Doctrine that I know of. I don’t know that anybody has enunciated a worldview the way that Henry Kissinger did in his day, or George Shultz, or even [James] Baker. I have nothing but respect for Hillary, but I think the world today is run out of the White House rather than Foggy Bottom and places like that.

First it was Todd Akin. Then Steve King. Then Joe Walsh. Then Richard Mourdock. One after another, Republican congressional nominees opened their mouths, inserted their feet, and embarrassed their party. Akin, a congressman running for U.S. Senate in Missouri, said rape survivors don’t need abortions because "if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." King, an Iowa congressman up for re-election, deflected a question about abortions for 12-year-old rape victims by saying, "I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way." Walsh, a House incumbent in Illinois, asserted that "with modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance" where abortion is necessary to protect a woman’s life or health. "There is no such exception as life of the mother," Walsh concluded. "And as far as health of the mother, same thing." Mourdock, the Indiana state treasurer and Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, opined that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (effective 1/4/2014) and Privacy Policy (effective 1/4/2014). GQ may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with prior written permission of Condé Nast.